(Reuters) – Nissan Motor urged the UK government on Wednesday to ease up its electric vehicle mandate, which encourages manufacturers to move from petrol and diesel vehicles to EVs.
Britain’s Zero Emissions Vehicle (ZEV) Mandate, introduced by the former Conservative government, requires at least 22% of an automaker’s new car sales in 2024 to be purely EVs, or they face hefty fines.
The Japanese automaker warned that missing the target would lead to significant fines for manufacturers and urged the UK government to allow more flexibility in borrowing credits and to implement a two-year monitoring period for 2024 and 2025, due to the slowdown in consumer demand.
Britain is likely to miss the 2024 targets set by the ZEV mandate, a trade body warned last month.
Nearly 300,000 new battery electric vehicles hit the road in the UK in 2024, representing 18.1% of the market share year-to-date, an increase from 16.3% last year, but still short of Britain’s 22% target.
Several global automakers are scaling down their electrification targets, hurt by slowing demand for fully electric vehicles due to a lack of affordable models, slow rollout of charging points, growing trade tensions and increased competition from cheaper Chinese rivals.
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Stellantis, in June, warned it could halt its UK production unless the government does more to boost EV demand.
“The mandate risks undermining the business case for manufacturing cars in the UK, and the viability of thousands of jobs and billions of pounds in investment,” Nissan said in a statement.
(Reporting by Kannaki Deka in Bengaluru; Editing by Mohammed Safi Shamsi)
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